Malev

Film director Kaaren Kaer with his friends has made an excellent film about history of Estonia - little country in Eastern Europe. Some people call it parody, yes, may be it is parody of film. But actually it touches all the European history and many European countries (France,Italy, Germany, Russia)in 12th century. This film has surprisingly fresh feeling: I can call it also the parody of historical movies, author laughts about large scale American movies with thousands of fighters and the seas with blood. We can call it black humor, I can only admire directors courage to show his own country, people and history in such a sarcastic way.And this film is good way to understand the way of thinking of little countries and their strange culture. After I saw this film, I can say: this film discovers new style of historical movies, that is stylish and shocking as was Lars Von Triir's movie Idiots in 1998. If Western Europe has nothing to say anymore, Eastern Europe has not spoken yet!!!

Malev is a really great film about a boy, Uru, who was taken from his village by German crusaders. He is taken to a church, far from his homeland. There he meets a revolutionary monk-spy, Mentor Wolfram, from France, who works for a group of monks, who are after Estonian frogs. Wolfram teaches the boy to fight, to read and helps him in other ways too. Uru and Wolfram meet the Bishop in Riga at some point. There he overhears the plans to invade Estonia. Uru grows up and escapes with the help of Wolfram.

No one at home believes Uru and no one listens to him until one day the Germans attack. Uru goes from a village to a village searching for help. Finally a meeting of village elders is arranged and there they decide with Uru's help to create a militia to go up against the Germans.

Altogether it's a wonderful and a really funny movie and there is a really funny and twisted perspective on history in that movie. The only problem is, that most of the jokes in the movie can't be translated or they lose their point.

It was the first movie I went to see in the cinema in a really long time and it was really worth it. I'd really like to see it again.

Malev is a film that is hardly enjoyable when you have the wrong expectations, I experienced that myself. But if you already know what expects you, you can look over certain things and concentrate on others.

There are two things in particular that have an especially disenchanting effect, namely the pacing and the subtleness. The pacing is awkward, there's no rhythm, no dynamic, no development. The film is slow, repetitive and without any sense of proportion. And as for the subtleness, there isn't any. If you were to define the word "crude", a reference to this film would give an excellent example.

So, keep that in mind when watching this film and don't get too angry over it. There are three people portrayed in this film, the French, the Germans and the Estonians. The crudeness of this portray has to be ignored in order to see a pretty interesting structure there, namely that within these people we have in each case two kinds of people, those who are actually doing something and those who are just enjoying their own magnificence. Lots of the humour lies just in the clash of these two fractions (mostly within the Estonians, to a lesser degree also within the Germans) and while the film is absolutely devoid of subtleness, it is in a very infantile way truthful in its depiction.

To see that is a bit difficult though, who looks in a film for psychological accuracy, when the film starts with declaring the French a nation of frog eaters, the Germans a nation of Hitler doubles and the Estonians...? Well, at least they fall under different regional stereotypes, but they are all as sophisticated as those about the Germans and the French. Yet the film reduces its protagonists pretty accurately to their infancy, viewed as children they exhibit an almost credible behaviour.

So, Malev is, I hate to say that, better than it seems on first disgusted glance.

The earliest history of what is now Estonia was written by a monk called Henry of Latvia. This film's subtitle is "Henry of Latvia Lied!" In the 13th century, German crusaders conquered Estonia and essentially ran the place from elegant manor houses until the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917.

This movie tells a very alternate -- and very funny -- version of how this came to be.

There are, unfortunately for us outsiders, more than a few inside jokes. For instance, it helps to know that the people of Estonia's largest island, Saaremaa, are seen by mainlanders as pseudo-Scandinavian rustics with a sort of Muppets' Swedish Chef accent. Comic allusions to the European Union may fly over the heads of people not familiar with EU politics. It's also helpful to know that turning to Russia for help in the past has typically proved not to be such a bright idea.

At the same time, I'm sure I don't need to explain why the French Knights Templar lust after Estonia's "natural resources" (swamp frogs). Or why the German knights all have little brush mustaches.

Some of the humor may be a little gory or crude for some tastes. There is a small amount of full frontal male nudity (swimming/bathing), if you prefer to be warned about such things. Though the performances are by and large outstanding, the script opens the odd loophole here and there that it never gets around to closing. Worst of all, as often happens with foreign films, the English subtitles all too often fall flat on the job. (Who quality controls these things, anyway??)

Still, if you like loopy absurdist humor of the Monty Python variety, you can't help but get a kick out of this likable and surprisingly well-made film from a tiny and beautiful country on the northern edge of Europe.